Showing the ASCII value of the current character

You can learn the ASCII or Unicode value of the character under the cursor by pressing ga in command mode or :as / :ascii on the command line . This displays the value of the current character in decimal, hex and octal. (Think "get ascii.")

The characterize plugin overrides the ga command to provide even more useful information for Unicode characters, such as any digraphs Vim has defined to enter the character. But note that it contains a bug so it will not identify any combining characters for UTF-8 characters.

The unicode plugin also provides additional information for any character without overriding the ga normal command. It provides the :UnicodeName command, that displays the official Unicode name for any character as well as defined digraphs or html entity name. This also works correctly for combined chars.